Hard News: The Solipsistic Left
350 Responses
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merc,
Ben, it is all that, and more, trust me.
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*impressed whistle*
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merc,
It's like 100 Years of Solitude, but it's real, from source material, with pirates and warring Popes!
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Mr Judd, how many muslims countries have we invaded lately, seen the casualty figures?
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ooh i love warring Popes, and Rosicrucians, they're always good for a bit of intrigue. i reckon they were behind that Alinghi business with the boats.
just to confuse things a bit more and harking back to an earlier point about rocks and hard places, let's not forget that every occupied european state had its own batallions of SS made up from local miscreants. and let's also not forget the British Legion of british troops fighting for the nazis. i also have euro family history tied up with all that so i just like those things not to be forgotten.
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merc,
You mean the Kings German Legion?
As for SS made up from local miscreants, erm, I'd have to see some evidence of that. From my interview with a Mayor of a Bastide at the time of occupation, the "SS batallions" were definitely not made up from locals.
There are very full records of SS activity, recruitment; Germans you know, with their records. Things are very much not forgotten, best to check our sources. -
i also have euro family history tied up with all that so i just like those things not to be forgotten.
Well they are not forgotten, other than by a few right wing non-academics.
This part of the thread began way back with a few folk putting forward the contention that Islam was somehow a "worse" religion than others and that many on the left have become apologists for fundamentalist Islam.
Given the violence inflicted on humanity by largely Christian societies in the last 100 years (WW1, WW2, Hiroshoma, Holocaust, Cold War, Communism, Fascism) I find this line of thinking very hard to swallow. Hell, we have even put a goodly amount of effort and money into encouraging Islamic fundamentalism in order to buy off the owners of oil production and further our geopolitical causes.
I also think is used as an excuse to discriminate against Muslims in ways that are counter productive and possibly similar to the way that other minorities (whether Quaker, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant) have been discriminated in the past.
merc, given your time in France you will be well aware of the long long history of discrimination against North Africans or "Les Arabs" as the French spit out the phrase. Similar attitudes are found in Spain, Greece and the UK. Juha, I have not visited Scandinavia but I too have spent plenty time in those other countries. The awful end point that Europe has come to time and time again in its history, culminating in the holocaust, can not be allowed to be repeated.
I fail to see why this is a contentious position.
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Then there was the Handzar or Handschar SS division, which sounds like a complete and utter fiasco on all parts.
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i'll have to dig about for the refs but yes it is my understanding that that's true.
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make that SS companies of locals, not battalions.
looking a bit closer i see that the Bristish Legion, aka Britische Freikorps, were ultimately a bit of a pr disaster for the nazis after all (they got all antsi about who exactly they'd fight). -
It's "les Beurres", Don, and Finland isn't part of Scandinavia even though it's right next to it. You may also find that xenophobia and discrimination in Europe - and elsewhere - isn't exclusively aimed at muslims.
But anyway, do continue and explain how the Muslim Holocaust you're hinting at is in progress.
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eek, let's not mention the Handschar SS division in all of this
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merc,
Juha, bang on, my bad, I have updates,
Handschar were a Muslim SS unit and very bad. At the start 1930- to be SS you had to be (insert criterion here), toward the end, anything went, the first SS unit created from other than German, was the Wiking, there was a Sikh one.
Yes there was a British, Canadian, Irish Freecorps, recruited mainly from POW's fighting supposedly for the German Army, however more probably for themselves, Lord Haw Haw recruited for this.
Then there was the Helpling units that were made up of ethnic groups to aid the soldiers, they did not fight (Mongolians springs to mind). -
At the start 1930- to be SS you had to be (insert criterion here), toward the end, anything went
yeah, their 'prestige' started to dwindle a little bit there toward the end, when it became apparent that after the war they wouldn't be rewarded so much with handmaidens and riches, but rather by being hacked to pieces
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But anyway, do continue and explain how the Muslim Holocaust you're hinting at is in progress.
Oh come on. That's about as willful as misreading as you could make.
So is this:
You may also find that xenophobia and discrimination in Europe - and elsewhere - isn't exclusively aimed at muslims.
Juha, I probably have a lot more respect for you than you have for me, but please re-read what I have posted here and stop putting words in my mouth.
Thinking about your point though, if I were an Arab and Muslim, I would be very concerned about the huge and indiscriminate loss of life in Iraq, the recent attacks on Lebanon and the ongoing status of Palestinians, the general denigration of my faith in mainstream western circles and wondering just where this might be leading to.
Has anyone else thought of the irony behind Iran releasing British soldiers after just two weeks whilst the USA keeps prisoners without trial for years on end in very dubious conditions in Guantanimo. That makes us (you and me), who are part of Western society look like complete hypocrites in others' eyes.
(oh, and I stand by "Les Arabs" as well, at least in the parts of France I have lived in).
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Has anyone else thought of the irony behind Iran releasing British soldiers
I take that back. Russell was, of course, miles ahead of me.
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No, I don't know what you're saying any more then. Nobody wants to have a repeat of the Holocaust for anyone, but I read what you wrote as Europe having lurched so far into lunacy that the muslims are pushed towards extermination. They're not integrating very well into a liberal, western society, but that's not the same. If there are no shared values, integration isn't going to work.
If you were an Arab and muslim, would you stop to wonder why so many of your own are the perpetrators of the attacks against your own people?
Even Americans who aren't the most perceptive lot sometimes wonder why they're so disliked and even feared overseas.
It's probably easier to blame it all on external factors though and if you think about it, both the Americans and the Arab world do.
I think we can all agree on Guantanamo being the death knell of justice and freedom in the US, but I'm still not going to give Iran plus points for kidnapping the sailors even if they do free them. That's just crazy.
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Hmm. This discussion's really veered off the tracks, so I'll get off before it crashes completely. :)
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veered off the tracks, so I'll get off
nonsense, it 'veered at about pages 3, 5, 8, 11 , 12 and 14. i've enjoyed the detours
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They're not integrating very well into a liberal, western society
Juha, some are, some are not. It's just too sweeping a statement. The fact is, the ghettoisation of minorities comes down to many factors, not leasts of which are fear of persecution by more powerful sections of the population. Other factors are economic, religious and a need to be with one's own. Orangemen in Glasgow, Irish in Boston, Italians in Island Bay, Muslims are not alone in that trend.
So, why do folks insist on singling them out? It feels to me that part of it at least is because we need a new bogey man, now that the USSR is no longer.
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merc,
Juha, we're just branching the code. (I know I'm a wannabe geek, sad...)
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This is all GOTO spaghetti recursion and up its own debugger now... the thread Godwined anyway. It cannot continue. Such is the Law of teh Intarweb.
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Hmm. This discussion's really veered off the tracks, so I'll get off before it crashes completely. :)
Well, yes. As I said, I am not trying to offend - especially during Passover. Doh!
Off to back my bags for my flight to Europe tomorrow.
Fair and balanced reporting will ensure but the Fins will, once again, be deprived of my ripping repartee :-)
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why do folks insist on singling them out? It feels to me that part of it at least is because we need a new bogey man, now that the USSR is no longer
amen
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Sonic, if that's the best parallel you can come up with, then we cannot agree, because your standards for analogy are so loose any intra-group conflict is going to meet them. And with that, I bid you adieu.
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